MG Car Club of South Australia
to replace the other one on the car, so I chucked that on as well. Haven’ t got to the rack boots yet – got a new accelerator cable then as my original one was cactus, then proceeded to poke it through the firewall without the sheath around it and I hit a positive terminal under the bonnet and the cable lit up red hot with smoke everywhere( I had just greased it so that it would slide in the sheath). I had to grab it and yank it backwards and burnt my hand and it melted in two. Haven’ t got to the rack boots yet – down to the bike shop to get another cable – won’ t do that again – better get a battery isolation switch – put that in and – Phew – almost to the rack boots. Getting the rack out is fun
– NOT – but we got there and then I find the bloody thing is packed full of grease and not 90 weight gear oil that its meant to have – that explained why when the rack boots failed no oil came out – OK better wash out the grease. That was fun I gotta tell you, but I got there – sand it all down and repaint. THEN I FITTED THE RACK BOOTS – YEA, THAT’ S WHAT I STARTED OUT TO DO – reinstalled the rack, filled with 90 weight gear oil as required and then I was actually able to wheel align the old girl and take her for a test run – lovely. Next was a tune up with plugs, points, timing, rocker clearance, new leads, new coil etc and that went well – now I am getting about 30MPG( country) instead of 19.5MPG. What the hell – I haven’ t done an oil change for a while, so I did that as well. While I was under the bonnet I noticed the oil engine to bulkhead pipe was leaking, so I got a new one of those.
Might as well look at the back suspension, Got some new upper and lower spring pads and two new drop arms that come off the shockers – derusted everything and repainted all the springs( no lube between them). I noticed that the back drivers shocker was seized in the middle of its stroke – pulled it and its neighbour to bits and washed out the most repulsive smelling oil I have every encountered. Rinsed with petrol and whatever I felt would work to get this zinc sludge out of them both and then blasted them with compressed air. They are a piece of cake to remove and disman-
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